Method and apparatus for using a single multi-function adapter with different operating systems

Abstract

A flexible arrangement allows a single arrangement of Ethernet channel adapter (ECA) hardware functions to appear as needed to conform to various operating system deployment models. A PCI interface presents a logical model of virtual devices appropriate to the relevant operating system. Mapping parameters and values are associated with the packet streams to allow the packet streams to be properly processed according to the presented logical model and needed operations. Mapping occurs at both the host side and at the network side to allow the multiple operations of the ECA to be performed while still allowing proper delivery at each interface.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] 2. Description of the Related Art [0003] In complex computer systems, particularly those in large transaction processing environments as shown in FIG. 1, the available servers 100 are often clustered together to improve overall system performance. Second, these clustered servers 100 are then connected by a storage area network (SAN) to storage units 106, so that all have high performance access to storage. Further, the servers 100 are also connected to an Ethernet network to allow the various user computers 110 to interact with the servers 100. Thus, the servers 100 use a first fabric 102 for clustering, a second fabric 104 for the SAN and a third fabric 108 to communicate with the users. In normal use the cluster fabric 102 is one such as InfiniBand, the SAN fabric 104 is one such as Fibre Channel and the user fabric 108 is one such as Ethernet. Therefore, in this configuration each of the servers 100 must have thr...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0010] In a design according to the present invention, a flexible arrangement allows a single arrangement of ECA hardware functions to appear as needed to conform with various operating system deployment models. A PCI interface presents a logical model appropriate to the relevant operating system. Mapping parameters and values are associated with the packet streams to allow the packet streams to be properly processed according to the presented logical model and needed operations. The mapping arrangement allows different logical models to be presented and yet have only a single hardware implementation. Mapping occurs at both the host side and at the network side to allow the multiple operations of the ECA to be performed while still allowing proper delivery at each interface.

Problems solved by technology

Further, the three adaptors take up physical space in a particular server, thus limiting the density of available servers in a high processor count environment.

This increases cost and complexity of the servers themselves.

While this type of design fits nicely into the PnP environment, it exposes issues related to shared resources between the PCI functions.

However, the software associated with the consolidated driver model has implicit inefficiencies due to the layers involved in virtualizing each I / O Service using host software.

One issue with WSD is that it does not export the various RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), such as DAPL (Direct Access Provider Library) or MPI (Message Passing Interface), that have been widely accepted by the clustering community.

Another issue with WSD is that it is not deployed on all Microsoft operating systems, so hardware vendors cannot rely on it to export their adapter I / O services in all Microsoft operating system environments.

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